Job points has ruined one of the foundations of this game

[Rydal]

I've said all I can say. I really don't know what people want. Anything else I say will result in me repeating myself. If you can't complete 75 era story missions, you should not be worrying about JP. Period. If you can't hit Apex mobs effectively, you should not be joining an Apex party. Period. If you can't solo the first hundred or so JP, you should not think about mastering the job. Period. JP just is not for you. Endgame content is just not for you. If you can't put the time and effort into bettering your character by those means, then do other things that are more conducive to your content level. If you want the cool things other people are getting (high level content invites, high JP, nice gear), you have to something to get it. Period.

[Elexia]

I've said all I can say. I really don't know what people want. Anything else I say will result in me repeating myself. If you can't complete 75 era story missions, you should not be worrying about JP. Period. If you can't hit Apex mobs effectively, you should not be joining an Apex party. Period. If you can't solo the first hundred or so JP, you should not think about mastering the job. Period. JP just is not for you. Endgame content is just not for you. If you can't put the time and effort

See, this is the problem - It's easy for people who have been consistently playing and kept up to stay caught up, it's the newer and returning players who have the trouble with it. "End-game is not for you", most people playing have been doing end-game since 2003 so I'm not sure how "end-game" can't be for someone just because the start up of the new character progression isn't as balanced as it could be. If you got in when they released it, you're set, much like no one is trying to "jump straight into apex parties", but the logic being put forth is:

"If you don't get a colibri camp, you shouldn't be trying to merit at all."

Remember how people were literally trying to drive each other out of colibri camps back in ToAU days? If you even played back then. Anyone who's played XI any length of time knows it's all about efficiency, that's the basis of the OP's argument if you don't get caught up on her wording.

[Jile]

Job points are a good idea in principle but in reality they have pretty much killed the "you can use any job on your char" idea. Now you have a main job and that's it.

Job points are such an extreme grind and are so important now to playing this game that you can only really use 1-2 jobs anymore. The rest are scrub jobs.

I've been back on ffxi for maybe 6-7 months and I have around 400 job points on my main job, my other jobs have barely any. I find myself only wanting to use my main for everything now because a) I want to get any possible job points on that b) they make so much difference that I feel gimped on any other job c) the prospect of taking on the massive job point grind on a new job is insanely NOPE.

The lower end of the job point acquisition curve really needs to be lifted or unlocking a set amount of job points on your main should unlock them on all jobs (say 100 job points on one job, unlocks said amount of all 99 jobs), the amount of soul crushing grinding needed to make a job serviceable should not be as much as it is.

Anyone that thinks FFXI is easy mode now isn't looking at the real picture, on most mmorpg games you get your gear and you're the best you can be. On FFXI you can have all the best gear and still be garbage, until you have grinded out a mass of job points.

FFXI is no different now at cap than it was back in the day, they just swapped the massive long winded grinding of fighting low drop rates with getting mass amounts of job points.

I can understand and relate to your frustration.

As I don't play up to 20hrs/day like I did years ago and if anything I'm a 'casual' player now, I'd say you're right that SE has made this a very long term grind for people like us to get Job Points. For those that get into perfect camps with perfect gear and grind out their Master jobs in no time, congrats to them but it's not like that for everyone... I mean at my current rate it's going to take a year or more for me to get one job to master level - for people with limited playtime that's our reality.

I've had people tell me, why bother playing if it's going to take a year to max job points on one job - its insulting really.

Regardless, SE isn't going to ease this grind without monetizing it some other way - its a method for keeping us playing longer, like grinds have always been, to make more money. To that end, with SE opening the cash shop doors to XI in a few updates we may see the *master* a job for only $49.95 or in the theme of pokemon, gotta master them all - for only $999.95.

[detlef]

One person complains that the login campaign that gives us free items is bad but then rips on someone else who thinks CP farming is too grindy. It's funny how people will cry and moan about how hard one aspect of the game in and then turn around and completely bitch out another player who is having trouble with something else. I think we've all done something like that.

I think the current CP situation is acceptable some of the time but not others. When you're exclusively looking for CP and want to do an Apex camp then you're probably good. But I'd like to see the everyday CP you get from other things increased a little bit. A little more from silt farming, a little bit larger bonus from a successful Ambuscade. That kind of thing. Make no mistake, Apex camps should be the best but the reward for playing the game should be bumped up. And since a lot of people talk about how great the CP was during double XP campaigns, let's not lose sight of the fact that it's comparatively not great the rest of the time and that this thread was posted after what, a 2-3 month dry spell?

[Rydal]

Don't try to pull the new/returning player card on me. I have been playing FFXI on this character since last June, started from scratch. In that year, I have mastered RDM and JP'd GEO, BLU and SMN to 100+. I didn't have years to be caught up. I didn't have a character with quests and missions already completed, skills capped, geared, etc. I know other players that have started after me that already have Relics and Mythics. I know a guy with an afterglow Relic that started less than a year ago.

JP is no where near as competitive as merits were. Mostly because the number of places to get JP are so numerous. The Boyada Tree, Escha Zi'tah and Ru'aun, Reisenjima, pretty much every gates zone, Marjami Ravine, Ra'Kaznar Outer and Inner are all places to JP decently. Again, in most cases, gear can make up for a job's lack of JP for most content. My 15 JP RUN can break 1100 Accuracy without food. I don't have the best gear either. With that, I can join Apex parties. After I get high enough JP's, I can join higher level fights to get better gear to JP faster to join better fights to get better gear to... See how it goes?

The OP is saying that JP is hard to get if you start from zero. No one is arguing that point. The system is set up that way. What the argument has turned into is whether getting those first few hundred points is feasible for everyone and I say it absolutely is. You have to do the OTHER stuff first. It sounds like new/returning players want to have the same access as people that have been playing for years. They can! Very quickly but not as soon as they start playing.

One person complains that the login campaign that gives us free items is bad but then rips on someone else who thinks CP farming is too grindy. It's funny how people will cry and moan about how hard one aspect of the game in and then turn around and completely bitch out another player who is having trouble with something else. I think we've all done something like that.

They're not the same thing at all though. You're comparing monthly rotten apples to sour oranges that taste better the more you eat them.

[Rooj]

I'm also a returning player so yeah, I don't buy that complaint at all. Apex isn't meant to be something you do right when you hit 99, or even right when you hit i119. Apex IS casual content. Forming a party never takes long because it is easy content that anyone (appropriately equipped) can join, it only takes a few minutes to walk to the camp, and most of the parties I joined lasted between 60 and 90 minutes.

I've also met other returning players or completely new players that have had no problem doing Apex... So I'm just trying to figure out what the REAL problem is here. Because it is not that JP is an "extreme" grind. I mean I wonder much JP I actually got from NOT even doing Apex... Just from things like Incursion, Vagary, Ambuscade, messing around in Escha zones... Domain Invasion. Are people under the impression that you need to do Apex BEFORE joining these events? Because that's wrong, and backwards.

[detlef]

They're not the same thing at all though. You're comparing monthly rotten apples to sour oranges that taste better the more you eat them.

The point is someone could easily come along and definitively tell you that you are a terrible player depending on handouts. Why don't you have a Dring, you are obviously not a serious player. That attitude isn't all that different from chastising another player for having difficulty with CP.

I happen to agree with you that the login campaigns have been bad and would like to see something better next month. But I also think that job points are an issue for a lot of players and should be looked at.

[detlef]

I've also met other returning players or completely new players that have had no problem doing Apex... So I'm just trying to figure out what the REAL problem is here. Because it is not that JP is an "extreme" grind. I mean I wonder much JP I actually got from NOT even doing Apex... Just from things like Incursion, Vagary, Ambuscade, messing around in Escha zones... Domain Invasion. Are people under the impression that you need to do Apex BEFORE joining these events? Because that's wrong, and backwards.

While it's true that you can get CP from a lot of these events, you're generally not as as flexible to choose which of your jobs is getting the CP. While they are nice bonuses (and as I've said, I think it's nice that you're making your character stronger while actually playing the game), it does suck when your CP is going into a job you don't care about as much.

I spent the last double XP campaign focusing on HTBC so I don't know how if things have changed but it's a lot more difficult if you can't find a GEO and a nuker. It's kind of unfortunate since a lot of PT setups depend on those jobs and people only want to CP on jobs that need it. It's especially bad if you want to get CP on a melee job, you pretty much have to build the PT around yourself and hope you can find enough support and magic damage to make it work. There's such a huge demand for GEOs and Death BLMs in endgame content you see a lot of them with stars already so it's harder to find people willing to CP these jobs lately, at least in my observation.

[Shyles]

It may sound strange, but I actually like how grindy CP is. As I mentioned in Rooj's thread, I soloed almost all of my CP on Dancer, and Puppetmaster as well. Many many Apex Erucas were stabbed. I never bothered with crabs, because why would a melee try to solo CP on a Paladin mob? Erucas had far less defense and evasion and trusts generally dispel cocoon within seconds.

Along the way, I made it a personal challenge to squeeze out more DPS so that I could kill the Erucas faster, and get longer CP chains. So I made improvements to my equipment and sometimes took breaks to focus on getting important items from soloable content like Wanion Belt, Fotia neck/belt, Love torque, etc... I also payed a lot of attention to my job abilities, and learned new timings to optimize how I used them over hundreds of repetitions.

I ended up with well-planned equipment sets, and a better understanding of my job. Before I was even at 500 JP, I was already doing almost 4x the amount of damage I was doing as a new Dancer. By the time I finally reached 2100 JP, I was doing nearly 6000 DPS and killing Apex Erucas within 1 or 2 rounds of 3-step skillchains.

I guess my point is that instead getting frustrated with the CP grind, you can make lemonade out of lemons. Apex mobs are a benchmark. They aren't end-game, but rather training dummies with defense/evasion that is more comparable to endgame NMs than any other normal mob in the game.

Sure you could get your Blue Mage carried to 2100 JP in an uber-awesome CP group in Doh Gates, but if you're a returning player or new to the job, then you'd likely just end up with a 2100 JP blue mage that is still in sparks or T1 escha-zitah gear that only knows how to spam CDC.

Ooooor you could challenge yourself by seeing how fast you can solo or duo Apex mobs, and make progress toward actually mastering your job. Yes it takes longer, but you do come out of it a better player.

[Rydal]

The point is someone could easily come along and definitively tell you that you are a terrible player depending on handouts. Why don't you have a Dring, you are obviously not a serious player. That attitude isn't all that different from chastising another player for having difficulty with CP.

I happen to agree with you that the login campaigns have been bad and would like to see something better next month. But I also think that job points are an issue for a lot of players and should be looked at.

I never said anyone here was a terrible player for thinking JP grinding is a huge grind. I have an issue with people saying JP is a huge grind but not helping themselves by making the grind easier with CP Bonuses AND saying the CP Bonuses are a huge grind. JP is a huge grind. That's a given. But there are ways to change 100 CP into 1500 CP on the same mob with no job gifts doing soloable and usually non-99 content. I am chastising someone who says that finishing Rise of Zilart is a huge grind or completing 2 Lair reives in Ceizak Battlegrounds is a huge grind or feeding a Rabbit or Uragnite once a day is a huge grind. People make JP an issue when it really isn't.

It will take a while to get a decent amount if you solo or are not doing it the "efficient" way, but you'll see more appealing numbers by getting CP Bonuses available outside Job gifts. And people usually get Job Master stars because they devote most of their time in-game to CPing. They usually have all their CP Bonuses capped in order to ease the grind. If you complain about JP when you haven't gotten at least some of the bonuses, your complaint can't be taken seriously. It just sounds lazy.

CP grinding is about dedication and patience, not luck (like a D. ring is). You can't call someone a bad player because of bad luck. If you want to be better at your job, you get JP. I don't think it was meant to be easy and thankfully, Square made it easier as you go along, not harder, which is the opposite of the EXP system. They could have easily made it get harder and harder as you go up.